When one person calls another person, the call will often go to call coverage, such as a voice mail system or live receptionist, or result in a busy signal. In an enterprise communication system, for example, callers must often leave a voice mail message for the intended recipient. Currently available voice mail applications typically allow the message recipient to automatically respond to the message sender by placing another telephone call or sending a reply voice mail message to the message sender. Such voice mail applications, however, do not provide a mechanism for determining the availability of a particular person. Thus, the message recipient lacks the necessary information to make an informed decision about the best way to reach the message sender. The message recipient may still not reach the message sender, for example, if the message sender is not there or is unavailable.
Instant messaging systems generally provide a mechanism for determining whether a message recipient is “present.” See, for example, Atkins et al., “Introducing Instant Messaging and Presence Into the Workplace,” Proc. of the Conf. on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Minneapolis, Minn., USA, ACM CHI 2002 (Apr. 20, 2002), downloadable from http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/˜ley/db/conf/chi/chi2002.html. The instant messaging system provided by America Online, for example, provides both an instant message function and a presence awareness function. The presence information allows the recipient of an instant message to determine whether the sender of the instant message is currently available (i.e., logged on to the AOL service) to receive additional instant messages. In addition, a number of instant messaging systems allow a user to provide a text message indicating his or her current availability, such as “out to lunch,” or “in a meeting.” Thus, the users of instant messaging systems can make more informed decisions about how to best communicate with an intended recipient. Unlike instant messaging systems, however, voice mail systems typically do not allow a message recipient to determine whether the message sender is currently present.
A need therefore exists for methods and systems that deliver voice mail messages to one or more intended recipients with an indication of the presence of the sender. A further need exists for voice mail methods and systems that allow a message recipient to automatically respond to a message sender at a communication device where the message sender is believed to be present.